The Good Shepherd Center - With Katrina Knight

Summary

In this episode, Reuel Sample interviews Katrina Knight, the executive director of Good Shepherd Center, a regional organization in North Carolina dedicated to addressing hunger and homelessness. Katrina shares insights into the various services provided by the center, including a soup kitchen, day shelter, medical services, and night shelter for families and individuals. The conversation delves into the challenges faced by the organization, the impact of COVID-19 on homelessness trends, and the importance of affordable housing. Katrina emphasizes the need for community support and advocacy to address the growing housing crisis in the region.

Takeaways

Good Shepherd Center serves over 138,000 meals a year.
The organization reclaims 500 tons of food annually.
They aim to expedite families' moves out of shelter.
COVID-19 has reversed progress in reducing homelessness.
Affordable housing is crucial for community well-being.
Permanent supportive housing combines affordable apartments with support services.
Community advocacy is essential for addressing housing issues.
The center provides medical services to those in need.
Volunteers are vital for the center's operations.
The organization is focused on continuous improvement and learning.

Sound Bites

"We serve over 138,000 meals a year."
"COVID has really reversed some of our progress."
"We need to be thinking about affordable housing."

Transcript

0:00

Good evening and welcome to the Nikki and Reuel Podcast Experience. I'm Reuel Sample. Nikki is on vacation today. She has sent me numerous videos of her time down in warm places as we struggle with 40 degree weather and rain. So Nikki, wherever you are, I hope you are enjoying yourself. Uh, but the good news is, is that we're going to have a great podcast without you. So, uh, it's nice to have on board with us. Truly a wonderful person. I've been looking forward to talking with her for the last two months, ever since I found out about her organization as we were talking before the podcast. Uh, Katrina and I started talking about her ministries and the things that she's doing at good Shepherd, and she just launched into what she's doing. She is so incredibly passionate about what she is doing. So I just I cannot wait for everyone to get to get to know her. I want to welcome on board Katrina Knight, the executive director of good Shepherd. Good evening, Katrina, and welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much. I'm excited to be here. I am too, as I said, I've been looking forward to this for for quite a while, ever since, uh, well, since before the beginning of the year. And and I'm so glad that you could take time, because you folks are incredibly busy down there at the Katrina at the Katrina Center. The the the good, the good Shepherd center. Tell us about the good Shepherd center. What is it? What is good Shepherd? So we are over 40 years old. We are just a local organization, actually a regional organization that serves this region of North Carolina. Most of the folks we serve hail from New Hanover County, Brunswick County or or Pender County unless they are veterans, in which case they might come to us from Onslow County. But we have an array of services all aimed at addressing either hunger or homelessness. So on the hunger side of things, we began as a soup kitchen back in 1983. We still have that soup kitchen. It's open to the community. We have a breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday that is trying to really kind of be a stopgap. We have a lot of hungry seniors, a lot of sort of your your working low income folks who rely on us to kind of fill in the gaps of what their what they're able to afford in terms of their pantry at home. Um, and so not just substantial meals, but also healthy meals as well, because particularly our seniors and our folks with disabilities, they often come to us already with some compromised health, and we want to do what we can to kind of shore them up nutrition wise. Not just in terms of getting them through that, that next hour of being hungry. So we have some related programs that salvage food from around the community, that create food boxes for seniors and other folks with special needs, who we have moved out of homelessness to housing, but who may have a hard time getting to the grocery store or again affording adequate amounts of food. Everything else we do is aimed at addressing homelessness. So for more than a couple of decades, we've had a day shelter that is really meant to be a safe haven for unsheltered folks. You know, sort of your the folks who you picture who might be still sleeping on the streets or in their cars, you know, they might be reluctant to come in for the night, especially if they have a severe and persistent mental illness. You know, coming in amongst a bunch of strangers is a very scary thing for anyone. But but especially for for some of those folks. And so during the daytime hours, It's nice for them to have a place to come in like today, out of the elements, a place to take a shower, to use the phone to, to receive assistance, applying for a job or reestablishing their identification because maybe they've lost their photo ID or their social security card or what have you. So again, it's kind of a safe place to first kind of come and regroup. We provide case management, including for that group, to help them make a plan for returning to to housing again. There's a clothing closet attached. There's also a medical clinic that is a partnership with Cape Fear Clinic. And it's not a full fledged medical home, but we have a full, full time nurse staffing it as well as a physician assistant. Um, uh, you know, providing anything from chronic condition, diagnosis and maintenance, an awful lot of that. We have a lot of, uh, asthma, diabetes, hypertension amongst our group, but also a lot of folks who, you know, might have a serious condition requiring an eye surgery or some sort of specialist care. And they really look to our clinic staff to help kind of smooth the way and refer them for some of these advanced procedures that they need. So we we serve that this is. This is all happening at your day at your day clinic. I want to go back. Yes, I want I want to get back. I want to get deeper into that. But before I lose the thought process, as you were talking about your, your your soup kitchen, for lack of better words, but you serve more than soup. Of course you talk. You use the word food reclamation. Now, I have a feeling I know what that is, but I want to make sure that I know what that is. What is what is food reclamation. Kind of glossed over that. So in part to make our soup kitchen happen because, um, you know, we we may serve 130,000 hot meals in a year. That's a lot of food we need to bring in to to make that possible, especially when we really want to be including fresh produce and, you know, lean meats and things that will just not just fill people up. But but again, um, really kind of fuel their nutrition. That's a lot of food that we need to be bringing in some way, either purchasing it or through donation. And so we've always had an attached program called Second Helpings. And we have a whole corps of volunteers just for that program where seven mornings a week these folks are going out to grocery stores, uh, sometimes restaurants and, um, even catering companies sometimes. And they're, they're literally rescuing food or collecting food that these partners have set aside for us. When I first visited Good Shepherd and was told about Second Helpings, I just assumed we meant food that was on its way out the door. You know, to be thrown out like apples with big spots on them, or unusable canned goods or what have you. And what's amazing is it's it's as much as 500 tons of food a year, um, that you could argue might otherwise have been thrown away, but but for the most part, it is very quality, usable. Um, produce, meat, dairy, uh, bread products, um, things that we rely on to make those more than 100,000 hot meals possible. Um, what's also was interesting to me when I first got to know good Shepherd is for sure some of it is making those soup kitchen meals possible. Um, but the majority of it we actually give away to other community partners like Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, which is solely a pantry. They're not doing served meals, but seniors and other, you know, low income folks are going to them each week looking for pantry items to take home, to be able to, to make meals from. Um, you know, nourish NC, uh, a much younger organization, but one that that fills a real need in terms of feeding families. You know, if we can help these groups by collecting this food and then funneling a lot of it to them, we're making our mission happen. Even if we didn't meet that senior or that hungry family or what have you. So of the 500 tons of food that we are rescuing, collecting, reclaiming, um, you know, we are redirecting the majority of it to these other folks to make sure that not just through Good Shepherd, but through these partners, it really is getting in the hands and honestly in the stomachs of the the adults and children who need it the most. That's 500 tons of reclaimed food just here in New Hanover County a year. That's right. That is absolutely amazing. You also threw out another number, uh, 138,000 meals a year that comes out to roughly, what, 3 to 400 meals a day that you're serving. You know, it varies by the day. Probably hour record in a day with some fluctuation, you know, might be 500 on a on a very busy day. You know, we find that seniors, for example, if they're living on a fixed income, things might be leaner for them toward the end of the month than they are at the beginning of the month. Sure, that makes sense. It's not a it's not unusual. You know, for example, a couple of weeks ago, late January, if it was, you know, the end of January, we might see more of our elderly neighbors coming in for lunch, you know, to have a substantial meal and to help them through to the next day. We never want any of our neighbors to be skipping meals, but we do know that that is a reality for some of our elderly folks. For some parents where there isn't enough to go around, you know, we see mothers skipping dinner. Um, if those folks can come in with us and get a really substantial meal, even if it's even if it's just for lunch during the day, it's going to help them through, you know, what is a difficult time, but help them through to the next day. Now, also at your day shelter, in addition to the food, they are, as you were saying earlier, they're getting medical care. They're getting, uh, let's call it document care is that they're they're getting updated driver's licenses or IDs. Um, how many you partner with a medical clinic. Which medical clinic are you partnering with? You know, for many years, we partnered with the New Hanover County Health Department, and they were just amazing. I mean, the best relationship with the health department I've ever had. Um, more recently, um, we are partnering with Cape Fear Clinic, and they are a bona fide standalone nonprofit, you know, of their own. Um, but they are the ones who. So they now supervise our nurse so that we, we fundraise for her. But she has medical supervision, you know, under their, you know, licensing and insurance and so on. Um, but they're also providing, um, either a physician assistant or a nurse practitioner multiple times a week so that we actually have two medical professionals to see our folks. And they they provide daytime hours, but also once or twice a week, they will be here in the evening as well because, um, contrary to what a lot of folks think, many of the people who come to us for shelter and stay with us, they have jobs. So they get up in the morning just like you, or I might get their kids ready for school, and then they leave for their work, and we might not see them again until 5 p.m. 6 p.m.. Some some of them have jobs where they they don't get back home to good Shepherd until 9 p.m.. Um, and so it's it's helpful. We've had to make an adjustment in all of our services because we, we can't be an 8 to 5 or 9 to 5 kind of operation when so many people, when they're available to meet with their case manager or they're available to see a nurse, you know, is in those evening or weekend hours. So we we have to adjust to the needs of the people who have come to us for services. Now that that that's a transition into the the next service that you provide. You've got food services, you've got day shelter and then you've got night shelter. How many people can you shelter? Are you sheltering families? Are you sheltering individuals? What uh what's your set up like? So interestingly, uh, and this was decided before I got here in 2004. Good Shepherd is a shelter that is a little untraditional, nontraditional in that we shelter single men in two dorms. Single ladies in a separate dorm and and families with children. And the families have private rooms where each family has its own room to return to each night with their children. And so we're a little unusual nationally. A lot of, uh, a lot of groups will pick a target population or a subpopulation, and they will create a shelter that is just for single gentlemen or just for women and children, let's say. Um, and so from our first night of operation, we have always endeavored to serve every demographic that might need us. And the upside of that is, you know, if tomorrow a single father with children presents for shelter and needs us, we will be able to accommodate them Um, rather than say, oh, we're only set up for for ladies or ladies with children. Um, and so about 100 is our max. And, uh, I'm, I'm sorry to say, for many months now, we have been back at 100. We had many years ago, brought that nightly census down by being more housing focused. Um, and that felt like great progress. You know, we might meet 50 new faces in a month, but it wasn't 50 new faces on top of a group of people who maybe were chronically homeless and had sort of gotten stuck here where we hadn't figured out how to help them up and out. Um, so it's a little disheartening to be at or back at 100. Um, and again, that's single women, single men and families with children. Uh, we do also at the same time have a waiting list. Uh, for every one of those of those populations. And that's that is new territory for us. Honestly. Honestly, during this Covid era, um, it hasn't been unusual in the past to sometimes have a wait list for the single gentleman, let's say. Um, but to to have a wait list for every population, including families with children who might be sleeping in their car, waiting to come in or in, in some other situation that, um, as the federal government says, is not meant for human habitation. You know, that's that's new territory. And so all the more reason we put pressure on ourselves to expedite families moves out of shelter and back to housing again, not only for their well-being, but also to create space for that next family that is waiting to come in and who who we want to bring into a safer situation than than where they are currently. That's got to be the toughest thing in the in the world to have to turn away a family. That's that's coming to you for for. Does that does that happen? Well, you're saying it's happening more and more. Uh, right. How how does your staff handle that? Oh, that's a tough one. You know, obviously we care for everyone in crisis, but, um, you know, veterans have a special place in in our hearts and others families or children. Um, the little children, you know, we've we've had parents come to us straight from the hospital with a newborn. I mean, we and we've had in the last year or two, we've had a baby born in the shelter. So, um, we, the staff have been through it. Um, you know, I will say I'm really proud of our team because, you know, we never presume we have everything figured out. And in fact, I think we presume we don't have everything figured out. And even as we're making mistakes, trying to, um, improve our strategies and and how we respond to people's needs. Um, you know, we're always brainstorming what what could we do more and better? And so, for example, you know, I don't know if I could tell you that ten years ago, we had the ability sometimes to rehouse a family straight out of their car. But that happens now sometimes where that's where a space didn't open up in the shelter. But but we were able to go ahead and connect them with one of our case managers, who we call a case manager slash housing specialist. Um, and that person began working with them and strategizing with them. Okay. Well, what what income is at play? What what are some options in terms of affordable units? You know, can we facilitate, uh, you know, meeting a landlord, filling out an application. Maybe we can step in with first and last months rent or application fees to kind of expedite things or or to get that landlord's attention and, and encourage them to rent to our family instead of, you know, someone else. And so, um, I would say it really kind of took off early in Covid. Out of desperation, when we were having to try to, um, you know, decompress our shelter operation, you know, a congregate shelter is not set up for six foot distancing. So we we temporarily stood up an extra shelter at a motel. Um, but in that, in that era, the first really painful year of Covid, um, we, we got pretty good at, um, never moving somebody out of their car until, boom, we're ready to move them into their apartment. And so, you know, that would have been kind of unthinkable 15 years ago. Um, in part because there weren't always the private or government supports that. We need to make that happen. You know, in 2025, it's a lot more expensive to rehouse a family today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I mean, I, I can remember back when $500 often made the difference. Um, we can't rehouse somebody with $500 anymore, you know, and increasingly not in Brunswick County. Um, you know, every every county is beginning to catch up with us in terms of the lack of affordability, which is which is really an unfortunate thing. And again, we we shelter and rehouse people out of Brunswick County and other, you know, neighboring counties as well. We're not just about Wilmington. Um, so that's, uh, you know, that that's definitely part of it. We, you know, we could talk more about this, but I feel like we've already taken on a lot. And, you know, I worry about I always want to make sure we can do a good job with what we've already committed to. At the same time, to their credit, our board of directors are routinely often asking, what more should we be doing? What more could we be doing? And at the height of the pandemic in 2020, they lost no steam, saying what more should we? Should we or could we be doing? Even when I thought I was just trying to keep people alive here in this building. So one of the things we plan to do in the next two years is expand our main campus across the street from where we are in Martin Street, just south of downtown Wilmington. And as part of a multi, um, a multi-use building, if you will. Um, one really key component of it will be a new, bigger, more supportive family shelter. So while I can't, I can't lean on it today, I can picture the day in the not too distant future when instead of four families, we might be able to shelter six or even eight families at a time. So every week, every month, every year, we will be able to serve more families and more quickly move them out of the less than healthy, uh, situations that they find themselves in. You know, before they reach out to us. I want to bring up some stats here. Uh, let's see if I can't get it on the on the screen here. Um, this is from the, uh, the housing build North Carolina, uh, website, and it's talking about that over the over the last 15 years, North Carolina has outstripped national trends in its increase of unsheltered people. Uh, while that has gone down a little bit. It is now coming back up. It's talking. It's using terms like sheltered homelessness and unsheltered homelessness. But we're seeing that trend come back up at the end of 2024. Is that what we're seeing here in Wilmington? Is this are we typical of what's going on, uh, across the state of North Carolina? And also, uh, help me, help me define that sheltered and that unsheltered because you, you you, uh, you talked about it earlier. Sure. So, for example, all around the country and here in our tri county community, we our continuum of care or our region, we engage in a point in time count every January. And it's, you know, as a methodology, it has its weaknesses, but it's meant to be kind of a snapshot, you know, on, on, on a on a given night, how many Unduplicated people could be identified as being homeless? So in January 2024, for example, right, about 600 people were counted or identified. And here in our community, about roughly half were sheltered and half were unsheltered. So sheltered. Meaning everyone who is in Good Shepherd that night, let's say it was 100 people were part of the 300 number sheltered. So they're homeless. They are currently receiving services and they're safe with us that night. But technically they're not in housing yet. And so they they count as homeless still. Right? So so good. Shepherd, for example, accounted for roughly a third of the sheltered number. Um, you know, folks who are in have a roof over their head, but it's it's not permanent housing yet. They're not back in an apartment. The other approximately 300 were folks who were identified as still living on the street, in the woods, you know, in encampments in their cars. And that that number has increased a good bit in recent years, and particularly during the pandemic era. We weren't seeing these numbers before 2000. Um, I'm sorry, before 2020. Um, you know, as a community, I can't tell you how many times, uh, you know, uh, a TV reporter wanting to do a lead in about good Shepherd makes a comment about how homelessness is always on the increase. You know, we kind of assume that that's true, but it's not. It's not true. It hasn't been true nationally or for North Carolina or for our community. There there was a good length of time where by being more housing focused, we had actually brought the trend line downward. Contrary to, you know what? What one might presume Covid has really reversed some of our progress, uh, which is which is frustrating and incredibly frustrating. And there, I think, are a lot of reasons for that. Sometimes when you're still in the midst of something, it can be hard to kind of pick apart the drivers and the reasons for it. Um, but it is it is a new situation. I would say, um, that we're back to a number like 600 on a given night and where so many of that 600 are unsheltered. Some of those might be people who are who are seeking out or accessing our day shelter. They would still they would still be considered unsheltered because they're not coming in for the night, if that makes sense. It's interesting. It's interesting you're talking about Covid in the in the present tense, where a lot of the country has moved on from Covid, but you're still you're saying that you are still wrestling with the effects of Covid even now? Yeah. And I and I don't pretend to completely understand it still. Um, you know, we still have Covid go through this building periodically, both on the volunteer. Sometimes the volunteers bring it in or the staff appear to bring it in, um, or, you know, it goes through our shelter guests. We try really hard to keep everyone safe, but it's a lot of people in one building, again, in close proximity with each other. You know, we probably have 500 regular volunteers. That's that's just a lot of people from the community. So just as just as if you have a friend or a family member who works at the hospital and they'll tell you, oh, there's a lot of RSV right now, there's a lot of flu right now, there's a lot of Covid right now, whatever the hospital is experiencing, about a week later, we usually see the same thing where we are. Um, you know, some of I say Covid in terms of terms of the era and the 2020 and beyond. Some of some of what I think we are experiencing the repercussions of are some of the housing related things that have happened since the advent of the pandemic that I that I for sure I, of all people, had no foresight with did not see coming. Um, you know, and an example would be, um, you know, I would have thought our economy, you know, would would crash, we might have a recession. Um, I didn't I didn't foresee all the buying up of properties and flipping them and, um, you know, our, our rents just in New Hanover County. Our rents have gone up 50% in five years. 50, 50% in five years. That's just renting. We're not even. We're not even talking about, uh, buying a house. And I think I think we all know homeownership, right? Um, yeah. Uh, a starter home is not $200,000 anymore. Um, but. Yeah, just just just in the renter community. And I can remember, gosh, it was either either 2020 or 2021. We received a call from a father of a disabled child, and he he was not homeless. He was not ever going to be homeless. He was not ever going to come to our soup kitchen. He he had nothing to do with good Shepherd other than he didn't know who else to call. Right. Which I feel good about that in a way. But his his message was, uh, my landlord has sold. Sold the apartment building I live in. Uh, my rent is going up $500 a month, like, immediately. And what he said to us was, I could stretch $100, maybe $200, but I don't know where another 500 every month comes from just to stay in the same apartment and keep my disabled child in his same school. And he was looking to me and to us for answers. And that felt terrible because I did not know what to, you know, he he's probably a great worker. He might even have what he perceives to be a pretty a pretty decent salaried job. But he's not going to get a $500 a month increase just to pass it off to his new landlord. And so that was I don't know if it was a canary in a coal mine, but that was like the first. That was one of the first things I remember happening that was like, wow, this is this is new and different. You know, that know that people are calling saying, I've never needed help before. I'm not going to be one of your clients. I just I'm at a loss what I'm supposed to do. And so since that time, multiple of our different, uh, local or regional housing coalitions or housing committees have either commissioned studies or, or leveraged data, you know, from a state group that has helped us see that, hey, it's that it's that father times like thousands, you know, people's people's earnings don't increase 50% in five years for the most part, especially our service workers, especially our public servants like our firefighters, our police officers. You know, when you hear the city talk about how many vacancies they have and how difficult a time they're having filling those housing costs are a huge driver of that. You know, folks are doing the math and they're going to less expensive communities. You know, we're and we're losing workers to less expensive communities so that the cost of housing. You can talk cost of living, but cost of housing as a proportion of that is really outsized. And as a community, we're struggling to figure out how do we ensure that there is a range of housing available for people at all along the whole spectrum of what people earn here? So how do we go about affordable housing here in New Hanover, where land has become more and more of a premium? You can't jump a curb and and and not hit new development someplace. Uh, there there are houses. There are houses put in around our around our neighborhood. That started out at$300,000. Well, $300,000 will get you a cement pad. Uh, you know, now they're there and you've got you've got really nice apartments going up, but those are a lot of money. What do we what do we do about affordable housing here in New Hanover and Wilmington specifically? Um, well, you know, there are a lot of strategies at play. Uh, I do also think our city, our county and our elected officials are increasingly aware that this isn't just a a heart issue. It's also it's also a very real economic issue. You know, those of us who are employers when when the people we employ cannot afford to live in the community that they work. That's a problem for us individually. But it begins to be a problem, you know, for all of us. When when Novant workers have to live two counties away when our public servants are far away. Um, so, you know, it's a lot of things. And, you know, the city of Wilmington, New Hanover County, for example, they have both made investments in both housing production and bringing units online that maybe, maybe target a modest or more modest, like 60% area median income, which people might think are the poorest of the poor. But, you know, teachers would qualify for that. Um, a lot of our salaried workers who are salaried workers but not earning$100,000 a year. Um, you know, would qualify for some of these, you know, more affordable apartments. We're fortunate to have some developers, some who have a long record here in our community or some who have just kind of come into this space in the last year or two who are willing to do the really tough work of leveraging tax credits and figuring out the complicated packaging to create, for example, a stairway development on Carolina Beach Road that will be not quite 300 units. You know, that really moves the needle. Um, you know, you've got I'm kind of fascinated by something that New Hanover County tried or, or has tried in recent years, which is, um, kind of a you could call it kind of a housing subsidy program, but it's, um, sometimes targeting teachers. Uh, not again, not your poorest of the poor, but folks who we rely on in this community and we we want them to be able to afford housing. So stepping in, maybe with $200 or $300 a month to bridge the gap between what that individual can afford and and what they need in order to have reliable housing. New Hanover County has had some good success with that. Um, and I, I can't say it as articulately as he did, but a couple of years ago, I heard Michael Lee say, um, I think it was his idea originally in some brainstorming, and he said something to the to the effect that, you know, ordinarily I wouldn't be behind something like that, but in a, in an unusual, an unusual market or an out of whack market calls for some unusual or out of whack or out of the norm strategies. So he said it much better than I'm saying it, but but I thought that was really interesting. Um, and it also reminds me one of the housing, um, reports that was put out maybe a year ago. There was a quote from a young teacher who was moving here, had been hired by one of our schools, was very excited to teach in New Hanover County until she went looking for housing. And her her quote was something like, I feel like I'm I feel pretty good about my salary. I feel like for where I'm at in my career, I have a pretty decent salary, but I go to apartment complex after apartment complex and they want me to show three times the rent as my income. Or they tell me I'm not qualified. And so I'm getting rejected over and over and over again, and I don't know where I'm going to live. You know, that's not what we want. Teachers. I think we all agree teachers already have. It's so tough right now in so many ways. We don't need on top of that for them to to have this stress of not knowing where they're going to live. Um, can they live anywhere within reasonable distance of the school where they're teaching? We don't want to make their lives any harder, and we don't want to give them reasons to leave New Hanover County or to decide they're not coming to New Hanover County. So that really resonated with me because, um, you know, when I was starting out, first of all, I never had to come up with first and last month's rent and security deposit just to get a landlord to talk to me. That never happened. Uh, of course, rents were so much cheaper back then, too. Um, but I also never had to prove that I had three times the income, and I. You know, it kind of makes sense. You know, the the landlord wants this to be very low risk. They they've got lots of takers. They have lots of options of who they could rent to. Um, and, and yet that does that does begin to feel a little impossible for just like regular folks who we rely on. And, you know, I'm part of some housing groups where we are asked to focus on or talk about workforce housing. And, and there's a certain definition for that. You know, sometimes it's 60 to 120% of your area median income, or 80 to 120%. And I, I can play that and I can participate in that. But I, I also at every turn, try to find an opportunity to say, yeah, but you know what? This is Wilmington, this is New Hanover County, this is Brunswick County. Workers here make $10 an hour. They make $12 an hour. You know, it doesn't start at $40,000 a year or what have you. You know, just today alone, probably everyone listening to us relied on somebody at some store, at some coffee shop, you know, getting groceries, who who makes a very modest hourly amount. And we don't want those people to decide that they can't afford to live here anymore because we need them and we're going to continue to Continue to rely on, and they're not going to travel from two counties away to make $12 or $15 an hour, because at some point that's going to feel untenable to them. I have lived in places where, uh, after storms or hurricanes or whatever the the workforce housing is blown over, and then developers come in and put in these really expensive places that only the, the rich and wealthy can, can rent. And there's nothing wrong with being rich and wealthy. But then, you know, what do you do? How do you get the service folks in? How do you get how do you get the folks who take care of those houses? And, uh, how do you and it the whole the whole thing collapses. How did you when you took over this job, you were the executive director. And your primary purpose is to make good Shepherds Center run. But it also sounds like you're an advocate outside of good shepherds for for these things that are affecting. Did you ever think that you were going to be an advocate for, uh, for, uh, folks outside your your community? Yes. Oh, uh. Well, I would say two things. Um, so, you know, I my my interview with God love them. The the at the time, Good Shepherd board was very unusual. Um, obviously, they were trying to fill out my abilities. My, you know, from their view was I fit, but I was asking them really tough questions, too. Um, because, you know, if if their vision at the time, they were about to break ground on the night shelter and, you know, I wanted to know what what is that about? Is it just is it just that you see an unmet need for about 100 beds a night or or is there more? Is it just about keeping people alive overnight? And overnight and that's going to be the outcome. Or is it more? And to their credit, they did not find me too off putting. And they they basically said, you know what? We don't even know what we don't know about this. If you're if you're saying there's a better way, we would be open to learning and we would support you in learning and trying to do more because because my feeling was, you know, if this is just to keep 100 adults and children alive overnight, I don't like you don't need me for that. Right. Like a lot of I mean, we don't we don't have to, like, roll our sleeves up and act like this is really tough, if that's all we're doing. But if, if, if what we want to do is try to create an experience where we return shelter to being as short an experience as possible, and I don't I don't have it figured out, but learn from others, learn from what's working elsewhere, and really try to expedite the return of homeless veterans. Back to housing. Homeless seniors. Back to housing. You know, how do we get these people up and out so that coming to a shelter isn't coming here to live? You know that we're really getting people back to being our healthy neighbors again and not staying here. And so they were they were like, you know what? We're in. We don't know either, but we're in and we will support you at every turn. And they really have I mean, at every turn, every, every iteration of our board has been all in on this. And I wouldn't have come. I wouldn't have come here to do this in 2004 if they didn't seem really genuine about supporting me and advocacy because I if I disappeared tomorrow, I would hope that their full expectation of the new person would be, you get out in the community and you don't just talk up good Shepherd. You talk about why so many folks are in are in housing crisis and what our responsibility is to to do about that. And my feeling is there's no greater prevention of homelessness than having adequate units of affordable housing at every level of income, but also whether you're a good shepherd or somebody else. How are we to move that mother and her children out of this shelter experience if we don't have anywhere to move her to? How do we help the veterans that are Sergeant Eugene Ashley, center, leave that behind and not live there forever and have the dignity of their own home again. If we don't have any apartments less than $1,500, you know, so we it's education, education and advocacy. And I will say my my mom is is 92. She, um, sweet, sweet lady. But she'll tell it like it is also real southern and at different moments in my life, when she felt like giving me a zinger in front of some people, um, she would announce Katrina's greatest talent and skill is being offended on other people's behalf. And she was. She would say it in this not very funny, not very kind way. Um, it was it was, you know, it was meant as a response to, you know, I was probably acting out in some way. Um, but, you know, maybe there's something to that, and, and I maybe I've tried to if you're, if you're going to have a big character flaw, try to use it for good instead of instead of bad. Um, and so, you know, maybe there's something, maybe there's something to that as well, where, you know, I'll be honest, I feel like, um, you know, we we don't all we don't all have to have something, you know, fancy or or huge or what have you, but but modest housing do I do I wish that for that for every person in our community? You know. Absolutely. And, um, I kind of mourned the days where we had more options for people who were just starting out were a young couple, um, a young GI, um, you know, we we've lost a lot of the lower income or modest options from our community. And so it stands to reason that more, more people are going to struggle. Who you or I would agree. We would love to see them in a, you know, a place of their own, even if it's just a cute little apartment, um, to come home to every evening. We definitely need to keep your plucky 92 year old mother away from my plucky 93 year old father, because I don't think either one of us could handle that. Uh, one of the things that you mentioned earlier, and you didn't put it quite this way, but I want to kind of reword what you, you you you said you said you are meeting the needs of To people, but you are also steering them away from needing you and I. And I like that. I like that philosophy. Which brings us to this other terminology that, uh, that I read, uh, when you wrote an article for the Wilmington Business Journal and you used, uh, a terminology called PSH. What is a PSH in the mission of, uh, of the Good Shepherd center? So permanent supportive housing is something that we began learning about several years ago. Um, you know, our I'll be honest, our shtick is just to assume we don't have everything figured out, and we need to engage in some continual learning. And so we're big fans of looking at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, for example, because they're really good about putting out real, digestible, user friendly information about research and and real evidence based outcomes, just like you might have in medicine or the health community, but around homelessness and interventions that seem to be working better or not. Um, to move people more quickly out of crisis and to help them stay in housing. And so, um, several years ago, um, both at conferences and on their website, just reading, we began to learn about this, this kind of housing intervention or model, a best practice model called permanent supportive housing or. Psh. And it's it's really just a label or a complicated way of describing the marriage of an affordable apartment with with fairly intensive on site supportive services. So it's not just an affordable apartment which many, many thousands of people need in our community. It's not just services like transportation to the VA medical clinic if you need it, or to a to a different doctor's appointment or what have you. It's the it's the two combined inextricably combined in one program. And so for us what that looks like. And it's going to we're going to sound a little crazy. But um, to us it's meant to be used with your hardest to serve folks, your hardest to house folks. So, you know that person who who fits the maybe the mental picture people have of who is homeless, but who actually represents maybe only 10 or 20% of that overall population. So it wouldn't be unusual for us to, in one of our PSH communities like Lakeside Reserve, where we have 40 units, wouldn't be unusual for us to move someone who has been in the woods the last eight years straight into his apartment, or someone who has lived in her car in one of our parks for 3 or 4 years straight into her apartment. It's targeted to folks who have been chronically homeless so very long time homeless and or cycling through, you know, er shelter, jail, maybe er shelter, er streets. Um, folks who tend to have pretty significant mental health issues where they are not able to weigh their options or make choices with the same brain chemistry that you or I have folks with very significant medical issues, often a combination, and sometimes including seniors, veterans. Um, but again, in our case, 100% of our residents being chronically homeless and having a really significant disability, typically that contributed to their loss of housing. You know, these are folks who were housed and it fell apart. And when you get into the detail of how it fell apart, um, their lack of understanding the lease, their inability to to understand expectations or communication with the landlord or their repeated hospitalizations and, um, you know, inability to pay their rent on time or take care of that while they were dealing with their health issues. It was often the contributing factor to their losing that previous housing to begin with. And so, not surprisingly, these are the folks who have the hardest time, if left to their own devices. They're not able to figure it out. Um, and so, you know, maybe they've been in our shelter for way longer than we would like. Um, maybe they're living on the street or again in the woods or their car. Um, but the people we're choosing, these are not the hundreds of other folks that we are rehousing in a year. We have a rehousing program for everyone else where we're helping them look for affordable housing. We're helping them figure out where's first month's rent and security deposit going to come from. Helping them view apartments and fill out applications. We're doing that with hundreds of others a year. This is for that little crowd, again, fitting the stereotype. But they're that little crowd who, without a really intensive kind of housing or special housing intervention, they're going to stay in the woods, they're going to keep overusing the air, they're going to be on the street. And again, lots of reliance on public services. And so there's good evidence that it's no more expensive to actually house those folks, keep them out of the air, keep them out of shelter, keep them out of jail by providing a kind of housing that, um, has a bit of a higher threshold for some unusual behavior. You know, your your resident might not understand the first couple of nights that, um, just because they're excited and they want to visit with their

neighbor down the hall, that you don't go knocking on their door at 11: 51:06

00,

that your neighbor is probably asleep at 11: 51:10

00, you know. Um, so that's why the neighbor gets mad at me. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, let's learn. Oh, it's okay to be excited, and. It's okay to want to meet your neighbors, but let's let's talk about what people typically expect in terms of, um, what's okay, what's appropriate neighborly behavior. You know, you want to you want to go see how they're doing. You knock on their door at 2 p.m. or 4 p.m., you know, or you wait for an opening from them to, to engage that way. Um, you know, it's understanding a lease. It's understanding or relearning. Um, you know, we pay for our rent before we pay for, um, other things, you know, needs before wants. Um, you know, learning how to go to the grocery store and pick groceries out and cook for one person. Um, you know, for some of our folks, those are all kind of Relearning sorts of things. Um, but, you know, one of the great parts of why it was compelling to us learning from other communities and then doing it ourselves, you know, not only not only like I always think my son once, once broke his collarbone, so he had to go to the ER. When your child is hurt, you don't want your child behind five people who did not need to be in the ER. You know, you want your kids seen. Um, so, you know, selfishly, we want to keep people out of the ER who don't need to be there also for their own well-being. Right. Yeah. What's so interesting about permanent supportive housing is it doesn't cure people's medical issues. It doesn't cure people's mental health issues. But almost immediately you see some improvement, sometimes just by virtue of will they know where all their medications are because they're right there on the kitchen counter where they left them yesterday. You know, there's no confusion about where their medications are so they're more likely to take them. They're more likely to take them correctly. Um, you know, we've had people who were supposed to have had a colonoscopy ten years previous and for, for various reasons, and being homeless, that wasn't happening. Um, but with our support, we could help get them back on track with the doctor. Make that appointment. You can't take a bus to your colonoscopy. So one of us will go with and be that person to sit with and wait and get them back to their apartment safely again so that they can be. What? Yeah. I'm sorry. What what this philosophy seems to to to to to almost force you to realize is that the, the reasons for homelessness, for your clients are as varied as the, the people that you're, that you are serving. And so you just can't simply rubber stamp each one, Feed him, house him. Send them on their way. Feed him, house him. Send them on their way. Is that each person has their own specific needs and again, getting them out of the need of needing you requires an individual approach to your clients, which I think is amazing. I don't want to let you I don't want to let you go without telling people how they can help you, because you are completely reliant on people's, uh, support of you, whether it's through the, the what? The food reclamation programs that you have, uh, you have, uh, your 21st annual landfall golf tournament coming up. Uh, what is what what is that? And how do people how can people help you through through golf? That's our biggest fundraiser of the year. Uh, it is at the country club of landfall. Um, it's actually we always have it on a Monday. It's May 19th this year. We're still looking for sponsors for that. And there are lots actually lots of ways to to contribute. So there are sponsorships at all different levels. Um, but but even for folks who don't have a lot to give, you know, we even have t whole sponsors that are are more modest where there's a, a little sign with your name or your company name, um, on one of the t holes so that all the golfers see it, you know, as they, they go by over the course of the day, you know, we always need volunteers. We we would be hard pressed to be open any day of the year without our volunteers. Um, you know, people's financial support keeps us operating, and it goes wherever the hole is, whether that's on the food services side or the shelter side, or rehousing families, for example. Um, and then again, you know, you brought up advocacy earlier. Um, you know, folks talking at the dinner table about the need for housing at all income levels. Um, the fact that, you know, we you know, it might seem scary when someone's proposing, quote unquote, affordable housing or or more modest housing down the street from our home or our child's school. Um, and it's okay to have a moment of, oh, I'm not sure about this, but but more and more, we need to be thinking and talking with each other about if we want to have a really vibrant Cape Fear community. Housing is really going to be at the heart of that. It already is at the heart of it. And so if we want the children at our child's school to be, well, if we want their teachers to be well, if we want the workers that we all rely on to be well and ready to come to work and do their job. Um, you know, they need to have a reliable roof over their head, that is, if not 30% of their income, a lot closer to 30% of their income, you know, than it might be today. And so that's an important investment in our shared quality of life. Katrina Knight, the executive Director of the good Shepherd center here in Wilmington, North Carolina. The website is. Good Shepherd Wilmington. Dot org, and you can go there. Please go to their website. It's amazing everything that you're doing. It's amazing the the campuses. It's amazing. The the training. It's amazing. Everything that you are doing to help out folks here in in Wilmington, we're going to have you on again because we're just scratching the surface of, of of of the and and, uh, I'm sure that you and Nikki will have a lot to talk about when she gets back from whatever vacation she's on. So, uh, Katrina, thank you so very much. Thank you. This has really been a pleasure. I'm going to put you in the green room, and we'll, uh, we'll talk soon. Great. Thank you. So that's it. Ladies and gentlemen, what a great conversation with, uh, with Katrina. If you get a chance again, please check out their website. Good. Shepherd Wilmington. It's good. Shepherd wilmington.org. They are doing quite literally the Lord's work as they help our brothers and sisters who are homeless for one reason or another. One of the big things is, is we have we have talked about on this podcast as well as other podcasts, is the cost of housing here in new in New Hanover and Wilmington continues to rise. And I don't know if you caught it. She's dealing with folks who are hearing from landlords that their rent is going up 500 bucks. Well, you know, I don't care how much money you're making,$500 a month is a lot of money, no matter who you are. These are these are conversations for the long term that each one of us have to have with our churches, with our elected leaders, with developers in developers in the area and, uh, folks like, uh, like the good Shepherd, uh, center are, are leading that discussion. If you can make sure that, uh, if you can make sure to check out their website, check out the, the golf tournament that's coming up. It's their 21st annual, uh, if you can't do the golf, uh, golf tournament, uh, consider volunteering, uh, whether it's, uh, serving in, in their, their kitchens, uh, washing dishes or helping out at the center, they can always use people. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Nikki Bascom will be back with us next week. She'll follow up with her, her, uh, her trivia question about, uh, New Hanover and the surrounding counties. And she'll probably regale us all with her trips to places unknown. But until then, I'm Reuel Sample. This has been the Nikki and Reuel podcast experience. Wishing you all the best. Thank you for listening.